Emma Sidi: ‘I’ve had teachers that get you to put on a bin bag and crawl around like a crab.’
Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian

It became clear to Emma Sidi this year that her interpretive dance about NHS waiting times would have to go. The 27-year-old comic, who has been seen in W1A and the BBC3 vlogging satire Pls Like, performed the sketch in January as part of a work-in-progress show in a studio space in London; Michael McIntyre was hogging the larger room next door.

Many comedians destined for Edinburgh each August put in a solid 10 or 11 months of workshopping beforehand. Sidi knows the drill, having taken two acclaimed sets to the fringe. Character Breakdown, in 2015, saw her play six different roles, including a feminism professor whose lecture, delivered entirely in Spanish, was prone to stray from the topic. At one point, she relates the tale of being interrupted by Dobby the House Elf during some “solo masturbación.” Sidi’s 2016 show, Telenovela, ended with the audience building giant foil wings for her to fly away.

By the time we meet in spring, I have seen her perform another work-in-progress hour in the basement of a pub – minus the NHS dance. “It’s good to get your weirdest ideas out there as early as you can,” says Sidi, who records every show to identify what works. “But that one didn’t offer enough character development.”

Also for the chop is a device that invited the audience to determine the running order of the sketches by cheering for different costumes laid out on the stage. “God, you really are seeing the rough bits,” she laughs. “I liked the idea of having a different finale each night, but you think: ‘Wouldn’t it be nice just to have a show that’s as funny as possible?’”

The pub gig ends with a line that seems to refer to work-in-progress shows in general (“Fuck it, that’ll do!”) but which Sidi knows will have to change. Already impressive is her monologue as Britta, an irrepressibly upbeat, denim-clad pan-European whose only friend is her cat. “I’ve been doing Britta since university. She’s the closest to me and I know her vocabulary inside out. If she wants to tell you that she’s been thinking about something, she’ll say, ‘I’ve been ’avin’ a scribble in ma noggin.’” Should Sidi get to be a star of Steve Coogan proportions, Britta is the likeliest candidate to become a more adorable equivalent of Alan Partridge: the Greatest Hit.

The new show, which has acquired the title Faces of Grace, offers other contenders. There’s a know-it-all American fresh from a bizarre blind date and a tearful wannabe Love Island contestant. There is also an aspiring nurse with a clench-jawed Katherine Hepburn drawl. “She started out as Australian but I couldn’t nail the accent. I’m trying to make her almost totally abstract. I like not knowing what the point of her is. I don’t want to give up on her yet.”

A month later, in an overheated theatre above another pub, the nurse has survived, pushed even further into the realm of the bizarre, though her musings on the celebrity coupling of Elon Musk and the singer Grimes (“Grusk”) have been cut. “It was too niche.” A highly strung “contemporary kinetic-movement practitioner” ties the show together.

Sidi as Anya in The Crocodile at Manchester international festival in 2015. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/Guardian

“I’ve been to classes and had teachers like her. They get you to put on a bin bag and crawl around like a crab, then they say: ‘OK, what kinetic possibilities did we get out of that?’ There have been times when I was going along just to generate material.” Evident in all five characters is Sidi’s affection for them and their aspirations. “I feel you can only fully write a person if you can love them. The ones here are all searching for grace, for transcendent beauty. They want to rise above their lowly position in the world.”

Our final meeting takes place at the Streatham Space Project in mid-July. Sidi has just performed her penultimate work in progress before Edinburgh, and it is the tightest and funniest yet. The jokes are pretty much intact, save for the odd alteration: a bowtie in one gag has become a cravat, while a Megabus reference has arrived tardily, much like a Megabus itself. But with the help of the director Oliver Dawe, Faces of Grace has graduated into a fluid and theatrical piece with bold transitions. A less sophisticated comic might carelessly throw on a new hat or cut to black to herald a change of character, whereas Sidi now has each one transform into the next like a regenerating Time Lord.

“Emotionally, I feel there’s something in the ending that I was looking for all along,” she says, cooling off outside the venue 10 minutes after leaving the stage. “Other than that, I’m just incredibly sweaty.” She admits that the last month was a slog. “It’s been really tough because of the World Cup and the heat, which are not usual factors when you’re preparing for Edinburgh. At one venue, I was blinded by sweat and makeup running into my eyes. But hopefully, the harder it gets, the better the show is because you’ve had to fight for it to work out.”

The poster for Faces of Grace, which suggests a Jackie Collins book cover, is pinned on the wall behind us. “It looks naff, which should convey that I’m not taking it too seriously,” she smiles. “When deep down, of course, I take it incredibly seriously indeed.”